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Western Media Disinformation about US-Saudi Aggression on Yemen, Part of the Arms Sales Deal

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2019-05-14 10:20:51

Yemen

Saudi Arabia and the so-called coalition, supported by the United States and several other western nations, have relentlessly bombed Yemen since March 2015. The 4-year war has killed thousands of Yemeni civilians, with tens of thousands more injured and millions facing famine. And the United Nations has repeatedly reported that the US-Saudi aggression is responsible for a majority of the civilian casualties. All this and the world is watching silently and the world media is covering up these crimes. At the beginning, major Western media outlets have obscured the responsibility Saudi Arabia, and its US and European supporters, bear for launching airstrikes on Yemen. However, there are no other parties presently bombing Yemen, so media cannot feign ignorance as to who is responsible for the attacks. Thus, reports on the bloody US-Saudi airstrikes were nonetheless rife with ambiguous and downright misleading language.

On August 23, 2017, the US-Saudi aggression bombed a hotel near the capital Sana'a, killing 41 people, 33 of whom—80 percent—were civilians, according to the United Nations. Then on August 25, the aggression bombed homes in Sana'a, massacring a dozen civilians, including eight members of the same family.

In an article, FAIR has taken this airstrike as an example how the world media dealt with this news. It pointed to the American NPR which described the airstrike, in a masterwork of euphemism, under the headline "Dozens Of People Killed As Airstrike Hits Hotel Near Yemen's Capital". It seems worth mentioning that the airstrike was supported by the same government that supports NPR. Apparently dozens of Yemenis mysteriously died of unknown causes at the exact moment a generic, unaffiliated airstrike hit the hotel. NPR only indirectly mentioned, in the story’s fifth paragraph, that the “Saudi-led coalition” was “blamed” for the attack.

Another example is AFP‘s news wire (8/23/17) which used the headline “Air Raids on Outskirts of Yemen Capital Kill ‘at least 30,'” again obscuring who was responsible for those air raids. France 24 (8/23/17) ran the wire with the headline “Air Raids on Yemen Capital Kill Dozens.” The BBC (8/23/17) wrote, “Yemen War: Air Strike on Hotel Outside Sanaa ‘Leaves 30 Dead.'” “Dozens Killed in Airstrike on Yemeni Hotel,” the Guardian headline (8/23/17) read. The London-based Middle East Eye (8/23/17) was just as ambiguous, with “Yemen Air Attack Destroys Hotel, Killing at Least 35 People,” as was Qatar-owned Al Jazeera (8/23/17), with “Air Raid in Yemen Kills at Least 35 people” and the Turkish TRT World (8/24/17), which wrote, “At Least 60 people Killed in Airstrikes on Hotel in Yemen.”

FAIR wondered, whose airstrike was it? What party was responsible? This remains unknown to those who only glanced at the headlines—that is to say, to most readers. The phrases “Salman bombing,” “Salman airstrikes” or “Saudi regime airstrikes” are nowhere to be found in reports on Yemen. Media calling US-Saudi attacks “Yemeni airstrikes” is at best misleading, and at worst flat-out false. Yet this language also has a political effect: It obscures the character of the war. This framing is part of the “civil war” trope media have propagated for four years. When Yemen is discussed, it is virtually always through the lens of a “civil war.” Surprisingly, in the midst of intensified aggression attacks, media denies the extent to which the conflict is actually a foreign war on Yemen, led by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and their US and European sponsors.

Even when Saudi Arabia’s guilt is acknowledged by media, the crucial role of the US is typically ignored. Readers miss out on crucial context that is needed to understand the war, and their governments’ contributions to it: Saudi Arabia is flying US-made planes, full of fuel provided by the US Air Force, dropping US- and UK-made bombs, with intelligence and assistance from American and British military officials. Therefore, global condemnation of Saudi airstrikes on civilian targets has brought public attention to Washington’s role in the conflict – a role the Western media has attempted to downplay for years.

In another report by Dan Glazebrook, published in Middle East Eye, Glazebrook said that Western media does not - or cannot - provide adequate coverage of the ongoing aggression on Yemen. “You might have thought that the targeted bombing of a bus full of children parked in a market far from any military activity, by forces enjoying support from the United States and United Kingdom, would make headlines. Yet this is not the case,” Glazebrook wrote.

Supporting his idea he took the Guardian as an example, supposedly a bastion of liberal values and humanitarian concern. Their report on the incident went online shortly before 7pm on the day of the crime. Yet next morning, it does not feature among their 13 headline stories and isn't even one of 11 headline stories on their "World news" section. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's desire to ban plastic bags was there, though, he said.

Another example, The Independent, now only to be found online and, "you might have thought, less subject to the pressure from advertisers that drives some of the self-censorship of its loss-leading print-edition cousins, is a little different. Yemen wasn't among its eight "Top Stories" that morning. It wasn't in its "More Stories" section either. Stories about British campers in France and Tottenham Hotspur manager Mauricio Pochettino's thoughts on Brexit were there, though," he added.

Alongside the straightforward lack of coverage, the downplaying of the level of killing in Yemen constitutes a second, more subtle, form of media blackout. Somewhere along the line, someone decided that 10,000 was the death toll to be forever associated with the Yemen war, and this number has appeared in virtually every article on the subject for years. In truth, this figure is a massive underestimate, given that at least 150,000 are believed to have died from starvation and preventable diseases last year alone, a direct consequence of the aggression on Yemen, the blockade of its ports, and the targeting of its civilian and agricultural infrastructure. Thus the "death toll" endlessly repeated in the media - and shamefully, this often includes alternative media - is in truth but a tiny fraction of the true level of suffering being rained down on that country by the West and its proxies.

In the other hand, to justify this campaign, rife with the use of banned munitions and absent of any legal mandate, media might claim that the Houthis (Ansarullah movement) are a serious threat because they are backed by Iran. The Guardian has made this quite clear, stating in almost every article that Saudi Arabia is at war with "Iranian-backed Houthi rebels." The problem is, more often than not, they have not provided any evidence at all that Iran is backing Houthis.

Let’s take another Guardian article, published on October 15, 2015. This article states that “the coalition is fighting the Iran-backed Houthis to drive them from Sana’a and other areas they captured last year, and to restore the internationally recognised president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.” “Iran-backed Houthis” is underlined by a hyperlink, supposedly to educate the reader on the source of the claim that the Houthis are indeed Iranian-backed. However, clicking on this hyperlink will take you to another article that explains nothing further than the previous article except again to reiterate that the Houthis are backed by Iran, providing no evidentiary support. This time, however, the word “Iran” is hyperlinked. Click on this hyperlink and it takes the reader to the Guardian’s world news page on Iran, with countless articles to choose from, mostly pertaining to the Iranian nuclear accord. This is where the rabbit hole ends.

If Iran is indeed waging war against Saudi Arabia and its proxies in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, the real question is – why isn’t the United States backing Tehran instead? The obvious answer to this question reveals the crumbling moral authority of the United States as the principled facade it has used for decades falls away from its hegemony-driven agenda worldwide.

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